Mob Motives

Photo credit: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images

                                                      THE MOB ON GOOD FRIDAY

What would you and I have been doing in the crowd in front of Pilate’s balcony on Good Friday morning? Mobs don’t tolerate non-participants and dissent.

Matthew 27:20 …the chief priests and elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed. (22) “What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Messiah?” Pilate asked. They all answered, “Crucify him!” (23) “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!” (24) When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!” (25) All the people answered, “His blood is on us and on our children!”

There are four “actors” in this scene of the drama: the perpetrators, the mob, the official, and the victim.

What motivated them to behave as they did on that terrible Friday morning?

The chief priests and elders, Matthew says, were instigators of the action; they were convinced that the Jesus movement was dangerous to the social order by promoting a charismatic outsider as a new leader, and that the movement disrupted the holy order of God and God’s people by elevating a mortal human being to be called Messiah. They were enraged and disgusted by this.

The crowd was in a frenzy. The volume and rhythm of their shouts riveted them. They were no longer individuals, willing to or even capable of independent expression. But, as with all mobs, they were divided; one part of them took on the agitators’ rage and felt righteous about targeting an enemy. Another part of the crowd was unconvinced of the right or wrong of what was going on but were afraid of being targeted. So, they participated and their shouting “Crucify him!” amplified the chant, even though they lacked conviction. Both parts of the mob “were selling their souls, and didn’t have the amount of integrity they have in other areas of their lives.” They were all ascending into tribal violence.

Pilate was the emperor’s official in the seat of authority. He controlled the military, which he could have used to break up the crowd, with predictable casualties and subsequent unpredictable chaos. Overall, his options were (1) to prevent the mob from assembling (it was too late for that), (2) to persuade them to be reasonable (he tried asking them “Why?”), (3) to divert their fixation from one target to another (Jesus Barabbas or Jesus the Messiah?), (4) or to give in to them and diffuse the critical situation with one victim rather than many.

Jesus was the victim. Jesus was to be the scapegoat whose death was a lesser evil (in the face of a dangerous mob riot), sacrificed for the greater good. Throughout his interrogation by Pilate he was mostly silent. Pilate was amazed that he offered no defense. There was nothing worthwhile for the victim to say.

This is a paradigm of how mob action happens.

Regretfully, witch-hunts, lynchings, riots, inquisitions, and wholesale genocides are not all things of the past. Sometimes they still even disrupt the functioning of national governments or lead to war. We can be swept up in them. “We can all be caught up in a social process that causes us to lose sight of the truth.”

[Credit to Megan Phelps-Roper of The Free Press for the March 31, 2023 YouTube discussion “Why Do We Hunt Witches?” for the lens through which I have viewed this Good Friday mob action.]